Joseph B. Chiles, called by one historian, ‘the Adam of a generation of pioneers’ is the man that everyone knows and yet nobody knows. In virtually every major work on the period of western migration, Chiles is mentioned. He was a friend of Broken Hand Fitzpatrick, Joe Walker, Kit Carson, John C. Fremont, Mariano Vallejo, John Bidwell, and most of the founding fathers of California. And yet there is no definitive work on the life and times of the man who crossed the continent seven times between 1841 and 1854, a period that encompassed the beginnings of transcontinental travel and the expansion of the United States to the Pacific Coast. Forgotten Trailblazer aims to fill this gap in our knowledge of the great migration experience that created modern California.

Joseph B. Chiles, called by one historian, ‘the Adam of a generation of pioneers’ is the man that everyone knows and yet nobody knows. In virtually every major work on the period of western migration, Chiles is mentioned. He was a friend of Broken Hand Fitzpatrick, Joe Walker, Kit Carson, John C. Fremont, Mariano Vallejo, John Bidwell, and most of the founding fathers of California. And yet there is no definitive work on the life and times of the man who crossed the continent seven times between 1841 and 1854, a period that encompassed the beginnings of transcontinental travel and the expansion of the United States to the Pacific Coast. Forgotten Trailblazer aims to fill this gap in our knowledge of the great migration experience that created modern California.